The Lord's Prayer and Ours

In today’s Gospel, the disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray as John taught his disciples to pray.  Jesus tells them to say “our Father, who art in heaven”.  He is asking us to go to God in prayer as a child would go to a loving, caring, understanding parent, one’s dad, or, in some cases, a surrogate father.  For some children that is a teacher, a coach, a counselor one regards with great trust.    “My Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be your name.”  As a child proudly speaks the name of his/her loving, caring, compassionate and wise father, or surrogate father, so, too, Jesus asks us to address God as a Father whom we highly respect, whose judgment and wisdom, love and concern, we highly revere.   “Your Kingdom come; your will be done on earth as in heaven.”  Jesus encourages us to approach God desiring that things happen in our lives according to the way God plans them to be. In Jeremiah 29:11, God says to us through the prophet: “For I know the plans I have for you.  They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.”  From that faith, we pray: “Your will be done on earth as in heaven.”

In the second half of the Our Father, Jesus turns our attention to relationships with others and to our own need for our “daily bread,”  forgiveness, not being led into “temptation”  and deliverance  from evil. For what more can we ask! And we know that God is eager to answer this prayer, as eager as any parent is to protect his/her children from evil, to ward off temptation that will lead a child onto the wrong path—a path that will lead to misery, suffering and pain—and to provide the child his/her daily bread for the day, that is, all that the child needs to realize his/her potential, his/her greatness, his/her ability to make a difference in the lives of others, to bring peace, justice, love and forgiveness to the world that day, one person at a time, including oneself.